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Debra Disman

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Sara Delaiden

Unfolding Possibilities: Something to Ponder for the New Year

December 15, 2021 By Debra Disman

What do we seek, yearn for, want, crave, need, are motivated to strive for, for this New Year coming up?

What is Possible?
And

How do we Achieve it?

What are the Possibilities, and how do we Realize them, in this day and age, in this present moment, under our current circumstances, confronted by challenges seemingly too numerous to count, much less take in?


Unfolding Possibilities, (front cover) 2021, 6+ x 78″ x 6+”, mixed media artists’ book

We have to somehow move forward in a positive way, keep on truckin’, keep on trying, keep at it, continue, keep on keeping on.
We have to try, each in our own way. Hopefully, something will line up.


Unfolding Possibilities, (closed) 2021, 6+ x 78″ x 6+”, mixed media artists’ book

An initiative of the Los Angeles Count Department of Mental Health, Why We Rise LA took place in May 2021, supporting hundreds of Community Arts & Culture Projects which took place across all Los Angeles County neighborhoods, in partnership with more than 100 community groups, artists, grassroots leaders, healers and other LA County Departments. These projects and collaborations included mural making, ancestral healing workshops, a Countywide public literary art project, a Countywide chalk art program and more to celebrate the remarkable resources and communities in LA County and used arts-based strategies for healing and wellbeing.

I was honored to teach a workshop as part of Why We Rise LA 2021 in coordination with 18th Street Art Center’sArts Learning Lab @ Home: called: Bookmaking with Self-Compassion.
See the workshop HERE!

Nearly 70 online participants learned to create the “Flower Fold” book structure, then added embellishment, images, and words expressing their experience of the pandemic, where they are at now, what they learned, what they wanted to share, their hopes, wishes, dreams, cares , fears, realizations, trauma, expressing the full gamut of human emotions.

The range of words submitted was wide-ranging, thought-provoking and evocative….including opposite emotions and experiences and bits of truth-telling, realizations and wisdom participants seemed eager to pass on to others in other words, humanness in its multiplicity.

I took the words generated by this workshop, and requested from the community at large, and stitched them into an Artists’ Book I made as a community collaboration, entitled, “Unfolding Possibilities“.  (“Unfolding Possibilities – Possibilities Unfolding”).  Videographer Jeny Amaya created a video of the project which was screened during the 18th Street Art Center event, “Left/Right/Here“

Unfolding Possibilities, Possibilities Unfolding: the making of above.

Unfolding Possibilities, (interior) 2021, 6+ x 78″ x 6+”, mixed media artists’ book
Unfolding Possibilities, (interior detail) 2021, 6+ x 78″ x 6+”, mixed media artists’ book

When confronted with what seems like overwhelming odds, and not in your/our, favor, try making something, try creating. Here is a workshop to show you how to do it, just one of countless, infinite ways you can make something (out of almost nothing-), create something, experience working with your hands and heart and imagination, craft something, fashion something, and perhaps share this with others. Relax your heart and soul and play. Just see, if you do not emerge, like the butterfly, stronger for the effort. Enjoy. See what happens.

Wishing You the absolute best, healthiest, most creative, most supportive, safest, and imaginative, New Year, now and ever.

Here. We . Go.

Filed Under: Artist in Residence, ARTISTS, Artists' Books, BOOKS, Exhibitions, New Work, Presentations, Teaching Artist, Work Tagged With: 18th Street Arts Center, 18th Street Arts Center (Airport Campus), 18th Street Arts Center Campus, 18th Street Arts Center exhbitions, Art in the time of pandemic, Artist Book, ARTIST'S BOOKS, Artists' Book/s, Arts Learning Lab, Awl, Bookmaking, Bookmaking With Self-COmpassion, Community Art Projects, Community Arts, Community Collaboration, Film, Flower Fold, Flower Fold Book, Flower Fold Structure, Folded Books, Frida Cano, Handmade Books, Left/Right/Here, Los Angeles Department of Mental Health, Making Books By Hand, Mulberry paper, Online Art Workshops, Pandemic, Pandemic Art projects, RECOVERY JUSTICE: Being Well, Respending to the Pandemic, Sara Delaiden, Screening, Unfolding Possibilities, Use Your Words, Video, We Rise, We Rise LA

“Unfolding Possibilities” for RECOVERY JUSTICE: BEING WELL

August 16, 2021 By Debra Disman

An initiative of the Los Angeles Count Department of Mental Health, Why We Rise LA took place in May 2021, supporting hundreds of Community Arts & Culture Projects which took place across all Los Angeles County neighborhoods, in partnership with more than 100 community groups, artists, grassroots leaders, healers and other LA County Departments. These projects and collaborations included mural making, ancestral healing workshops, a Countywide public literary art project, a Countywide chalk art program and more to celebrate the remarkable resources and communities in LA County and used arts-based strategies for healing and wellbeing.

I was honored to teach a workshop as part of Why We Rise LA 2021 in coordination with 18th Street Art Center’s Arts Learning Lab @ Home: called: Bookmaking with Self-Compassion.
See the workshop HERE!
Nearly 70 online participants learned to create the “Flower Fold” book structure, then added embellishment, images, and words expressing their experience of the pandemic, where they are at now, what they learned, what they wanted to share, their hopes, wishes, dreams, cares , fears, realizations, trauma, expressing the full gamut of human emotions.

The range of words submitted was wide-ranging, thought-provoking and evocative….including opposite emotions and experiences and bits of truth-telling, realizations and wisdom participants seemed eager to pass on to others in other words, humanness in its multiplicity.

I took the words generated by this workshop, and requested from the community at large, and stitched them into an Artists’ Book I made as a community collaboration, entitled, “Unfolding Possibilities“.  (“Unfolding Possibilities – Possibilities Unfolding”).  Videographer Jeny Amaya created a video of the project which was screened during the 18th Street Art Center event, “Left/Right/Here“

“Unfolding Possibilities” is on view  in the Recovery Justice: Being Well exhibition, at 18th Street Art Center‘s Airport Campus Gallery, through September 10, 2021.

Filed Under: ARTISTS, Artists' Books, BOOKS, Exhibitions, New Work, Presentations, Work Tagged With: 18th Street Arts Center, 18th Street Arts Center (Airport Campus), 18th Street Arts Center Campus, 18th Street Arts Center exhbitions, Art in the time of pandemic, Artist Book, ARTIST'S BOOKS, Artists' Book/s, Arts Learning Lab, Awl, Bookmaking, Bookmaking With Self-COmpassion, Community Art Projects, Community Arts, Community Collaboration, Film, Flower Fold, Flower Fold Book, Flower Fold Structure, Folded Books, Frida Cano, Handmade Books, Left/Right/Here, Los Angeles Department of Mental Health, Making Books By Hand, Mulberry paper, Online Art Workshops, Pandemic, Pandemic Art projects, RECOVERY JUSTICE: Being Well, Respending to the Pandemic, Sara Delaiden, Screening, Unfolding Possibilities, Use Your Words, Video, We Rise, We Rise LA

LEFT/RIGHT/HERE: An Outdoor Art Experience

July 5, 2021 By Debra Disman

Please Join Us For: 

LEFT/RIGHT/HERE: An Outdoor Art Experience

July 10, 2021 @ 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm

LEFT/ RIGHT/ HERE
An Outdoor Art Experience
Part of Recovery Justice: Being Well

July 10, 2021 | 7:30 – 9:30 PM
3026 Airport Ave, Santa Monica, 90405

Outdoor projections begin at 8 PM, at sunset. Lionel Popkin’s Six Positions on Uncertainty live performances in the Main Propeller Gallery are at 7:45 PM and 8:45 PM.
We will be allowing visitors into the gallery (masks required), and to view open studios, please register for faster check-in at the door.

Where is here? Can we be together? Can we find stability amidst uncertainty? Join artists Lionel Popkin, Marcus Kuiland-Nazario, Yrneh Gabon and Susie McKay Krieser, Lola del Fresno, Luciana Abait, Nicola Goode, Cognate Collective’s Market Exchange project, and Debra Disman in a one-night only interactive outdoor and indoor art experience as part of the exhibition Recovery Justice: Being Well.

Begin and end your experience with a special screening projected onto the Hanger and live performance of Popkin’s Six Positions on Uncertainty in the Propeller Gallery, contemplating a ritual to aid in both grounding oneself as well as working through the idea of social isolation due to the pandemic.

  • View vinyl murals including Gabon and McKay Kreiser’s Oneness, One Mask, One Love, One Heart🖤; Fresno’s The innocents (save a million lives); and Abait’s Mattress from Displacement Series on the Hangar’s Glider Wall outdoor gallery.
  • Check out Marcus Kuiland-Nazario’s Sea Change Lab pop-wagon project, with live performance and installation in the parking lot. ALEXANDMUSHI will be performing their Chair Conversations throughout the evening. Learn more about their performance here.
  • Discover Debra Disman’s new video filmed by videographer Jeny Amaya around self-compassion and book making and see her Artists’ Book, “Unfolding Possibilities”, which incorporates words offered up by the community in response to the pandemic through her Arts Learning Lab workshop: Bookmaking with Compassion, and pick up a copy of Nicola Goode’s limited edition poster with images from Board-Ups, a project documenting storefronts of Santa Monica’s business district during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.
  • Explore the handmade wares of artisan vendors from Cognate Collective’s Market Exchange project, and experience their crafting demonstrations. Learn more here: https://marketexchange.18thstreet.org/ 
  • Enjoy food trucks and artist open studios throughout the night!

This is a live, in-person event. Masks will be required at all times indoors. Reservations are required. 

You may choose to drive through the event, but due to the June 15 California re-opening, we will also allow visitors to park and enter inside the galleries to view the exhibition Recovery Justice: Being Well, Lionel Popkin’s live performance, and artist open studios.

Join Us!
Register here

Tagged With: Art of Recovery, ARTIST IN RESIDENCE, Being Well, Book, Bookmaking with compassion, Community Arts, Debra Disman, drive-through, in-person, Lionel Popkin, Lola del Fresno, Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, Luciana Abait, Nicola Goode, outdoor, Outdoor Art Experience, recovery justice, Sara Delaiden, Susie McKay Krieser, Unfolding Possibilities, We Rise, Why We Rise, Yrneh Gabon

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